Ann Cleeves - Cold Earth

‘We don’t know yet.’ Rosie smiled. ‘We thought we’d wait and see what suited.’

‘But as we can’t call him Prune, which is what he most looks like,’ the man went on, ‘we’d better come up with something else.’ He poured water into a teapot. ‘Will you both have a mug? And a dram to wet the baby’s head?’

‘Don’t you want to be on your own?’ Willow was still looking at the baby. ‘Your first night as a family.’

‘Oh, we’ll have years and years of that.’ Rosie lifted herself onto her feet and handed the child to Willow. ‘Here, have a cuddle while I take myself off for a pee. I might be some time.’ She was wearing baggy pyjamas and huge slippers and shuffled away to the stairs. ‘I can’t do anything at speed.’

‘You should have seen her,’ John said. ‘She was so brave.’

Willow took a seat at the table and sat, with the baby on her knee, while the tea was poured into mugs and the whisky into small glasses.

Jane woke to rain on the window and a sense of dislocation. Perhaps she’d been somewhere else in a dream. There was a moment of panic when she imagined she’d been drinking again; there was a taste in her mouth that reminded her of the self-disgust and failure that had always followed a bender. Then Kevin turned in his sleep and she knew where she was, and that she was still strong and sober. Sober at least. But despite that, there was little relief in the reality and she went back to sleep.

When she woke again, Kevin was out of bed and the light was on. He’d been in the shower and stood with a towel around his waist, his hair wet. He was looking down at her in a way that was almost fatherly. She thought how grateful she should be that he’d stood by her. Other men would have ditched her years before.

‘I was thinking we should get away,’ he said. ‘Have a bit of a holiday, just the two of us. The boys are old enough to leave alone and there’s not much work at this time of year.’ He sat on the bed beside her and she tried to push from her mind the thought that the wet towel would make the sheet damp. ‘Would you like that?’

‘Of course! Where would we go?’

‘Somewhere hot,’ he said. ‘Morocco, maybe. We should have a bit of adventure in our lives.’

She imagined hot sand and a market full of brightly coloured spices. ‘I’d love Morocco. And you’re right – we could use some time on our own.’ Then immediately she wondered how she could consider leaving the boys, if the killer hadn’t been found. If the situation was still unresolved.

‘I’ll go online to see if I can find a last-minute deal.’ He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘And perhaps when we get back they’ll have found the killer and all this will be over.’ He stood up and pulled on his clothes. She watched him and thought he’d worn better than she had. He still had the body of a young man, could easily be an older brother to her sons. But although she’d been thinking of the murders too, she wished he hadn’t mentioned the killer. It was as if he’d carried a distasteful smell into the bedroom with him.

When she got downstairs she could hear Kevin in the office, tapping away on the computer keyboard, looking for a dream holiday that somehow she couldn’t believe would ever happen. She made a pot of coffee and shouted up the stairs to ask the boys if they’d like breakfast. She’d already decided that she’d do a fry-up as a treat for Kevin, taken bacon out of the fridge and started grilling it in the pan. Michael appeared, dressed for school, apart from his socks. ‘Has Andy already left then? I was hoping he’d give me a lift.’

‘He’s still in bed, I expect.’ But already she felt the familiar sickness in the pit of her stomach. At one time she’d thought she’d known what her eldest son was thinking. They were kindred spirits, weren’t they? Now he drifted between home and Lerwick and she didn’t have a clue what he was up to.

‘I’ve checked. He’s not there.’

She looked out at the yard. It was still dark, but the table lamp in the office shone like a spotlight onto the parked vehicles. ‘His car’s still there. He must be around somewhere.’ She didn’t know what else to say, but she knew she wasn’t convincing either of them. Andy had disappeared the two nights ago and turned up wet and wan in the morning, refusing to speak to her, shutting himself in his room.

‘I’m not sure he slept in his bed last night.’

‘When did you last see him?’ She knew it wasn’t Michael’s fault, but she couldn’t keep the accusation out of her voice. She needed someone to blame.

‘Last night. When you were out at your meeting.’

She caught the trace of accusation in his voice too and wondered, not for the first time, how much he and Andy had resented the meetings – the fact that she’d had to juggle her recovery with their needs as they’d been growing up.

‘How did Andy seem then?’

Michael shrugged. He fished in the laundry basket for a pair of clean socks before answering. ‘Moody. The way he’s been since he came home from uni.’

‘Did he tell you where he was going?’

‘He’s never told me anything important. You’re the person he talks to.’ There was more resentment and something else in his tone. Jealousy. ‘Didn’t he leave you a note? He said he was going to. But I thought he’d be back late last night.’ Michael nodded towards the fridge, where recipes, photos and scraps of paper were fixed with magnets.

You might have told me last night! But Jane held her tongue. She knew Michael was right. Andy had always been… not exactly her favourite, because she’d known from the start that it would be wrong to have a favourite, but the son she felt closest to. ‘Oh, that’s OK then.’ She refused to rush over to the fridge to see what the note might say. She turned the bacon under the grill. ‘Would you like a bacon sandwich? I can give you a lift to school, if you like. It’d save you waiting for the bus in this weather and that’d give you a bit of extra time.’

‘That would be great.’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic exactly, but more conciliatory.

She waited until the men had finished breakfast and Michael had gone upstairs to fetch his school bag before she went to look for the note. She recognized Andy’s writing as she approached. It was wild and big and spidery:

I’m not great company at the moment, so I’m taking myself off for a while to sort myself out. Don’t worry about me and don’t try to phone because I won’t answer. I’m being well taken care of and I’ll be back when I’m more fun to live with.

She couldn’t help smiling, because this sounded almost like the old Andy. She took the note from the fridge and folded it up in her handbag, hiding it, just as she’d hidden love letters from Kevin from her parents when she was young. Michael was standing at the kitchen door in his outdoor clothes, ready to be off.

‘Where’s Andy gone then?’

‘Just to stay with a friend for a day or two.’

‘Why didn’t he take his car?’

Jane had to think about that. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’d had a drink and didn’t want to drive. He must have got a lift. Did you hear a car last night?’ She picked up her keys and put on her jacket.

‘Nah.’ But Michael wasn’t really interested now. He was on his phone texting to one of his friends.

Jane dropped him right at the gate of the Anderson High. He met up with a mate and swaggered inside, not even bothering to wave goodbye. She thought that Andy would never have been so graceless, then told herself that Michael wouldn’t have run away, leaving only a short note behind. Driving home, she saw there was a light on in the old manse, so on impulse she pulled off the road and drove down the track out onto the headland. When she tried the door it was locked, so she knocked again and at last Simon came to answer.